For the last two years I’ve been working on Dopplr, a service to help people travel smarter. I’ve been trying to explore new ways to organise and design social networks. I also tried to visualise an awful lot of data, and on top of that, do it in a way that delights our users. And that’s what I’m going to talk about at the Business to Buttons conference in Sweden this coming June.

In the time I created all of the above, I believe we’ve seen the rise of a class of services I call ‘personal informatics’ (about which Eilidh wrote an article) – a class of which Dopplr is a member.

Last year Tom Coates (product manager of FireEagle, and a well-known thoughtful practitioner in matters of social software) and I gave a talk at Web2.0Expo San Francisco, “Polite, Pertinent, and… Pretty: Designing for the New-wave of Personal Informatics“. This presentation looked at interaction design principles to maximise the humanity of personal informatics services and minimise privacy issues. Since then I’ve realised there’s a fourth ‘P’: ‘Persuasive’.

There are both implicit and explicit persuasive roles that such services can adopt and, in concert with the other ‘P’s, this becomes a valuable design strategy.

Persuasive Design is a field that has been in the ascendant since Stanford professor B.J. Fogg popularised the term in his 2003 book. Essentially, it is as designer and writer Jeremy Faludi describes: “crafting a product’s user experience so that the user’s actual interaction with the product changes their behaviour.”

It’s particularly interesting to consider this approach to the data-rich world of personal informatics. The data itself is coming from their behaviour in the world, after all: their travel in relation to Dopplr specifically, but you could also think of things like exercise for services such as Nike+ and Nokia Sports Tracker, or their music-listening in terms of Last.fm and Spotify.

So, how to employ persuasive design in the representation of personal informatics? Surely, you have to truly represent a user’s data back to them. Yes. I think that’s the basic tenet to stick to – one might group it under the ‘polite’ heading of the four ‘P’s. But the act of representing a user’s data, harvested from their behaviour or interactions with a service, is the completion of a feedback loop. And the nuances of how you deliver that feedback can produce different persuasive outcomes.

The most basic persuasive outcome is the most negative: you fail to present the data in an interesting and compelling way and you persuade the user of nothing. Or worse, not to bother returning to engage further in the service.

There are acts of micro-persuasion that can be factored into your service design, which might engender large outcomes. For instance, in Dopplr’s carbon calculator (created in partnership with AMEE) we respond to a month with no reported trips with a simple “we envy you”. Erika Hall’s “Copy as Interface” is a great guide to acts of micro-persuasion in interface design. And Stephen Anderson recently gave a great presentation on “The art and science of seductive interactions” which looks at these techniques in some detail.

At the larger scale of persuasion, there’s the opposite of the nightmare scenarios I described above: present the user’s data back to them in an interesting and compelling way that makes them engage with the service more frequently and more deeply.

This was what we were attempting with our ‘Personal Annual Report’ – a summary of the user’s data over 2008, visualised in what we hoped were interesting and beautiful ways and in the context of both their social network and the larger Dopplr community.

It succeeded, and also proved to be a significant user recruitment and retention asset. It also generated a lot of great marketing – both word-of-mouth (and blog) and in the traditional press.

I’m going to be talking in detail about the ‘Personal Annual Report’ at this year’s From Business to Buttons conference, and going deeper into the role of macro and micro persuasion in the design of personal informatics. I’m looking forward to discussing it with some of you there – hopefully you’ll be persuaded…

About From Business to Buttons

Held in lovely Malmö in southern Sweden, From Business to Buttons is the meeting place in Europe for interaction designers, business strategist and usability experts. This year it will be held on June 11-12.

Dopplr carbon footprint screenshot by sebastiankippe

We are living in a world where computing and information processing is going beyond the desktop model of computer interaction to be integrated into the everyday objects we interact with and activities in which we partake. During the course of a day someone ‘experiencing’ this ubiquitous computing may engage with a number of computational devices and services and not even be aware they are doing so.

This model is moving beyond the desktop paradigm, and has more recently been described as ‘everyware’.  When primarily looking at the objects involved, and the way they are networked through wireless technologies, this can then be described as the ‘internet of things’. Everyday objects being networked is a simple concept yet the application is complex, holding huge possibilities. If all objects from our daily routines could be ‘tagged’ with an identifying device we could see untold amounts of information about the product.

These technologies have the potential to redefine the way in which we interact with the physical world and how we gain insights about the actions that make up our daily routines. That greater awareness has the capacity to help us to adjust and moderate our behaviour in a number of positive ways.

Although we are not yet living in a world where our shoes can talk to our socks to tell them they don’t match… ubiquitous computing is without a doubt starting to creep into our lives. Adam Greenfield described it nicely when he wrote of “information processing dissolving into behaviour”. This is definitely the case for the emerging area of ‘Personal Informatics’.

Photo curtosy of Matt Jones & Tom Coates, from their presentation

Personal Informatics can be characterized as the monitoring and displaying of information about our daily activities through intelligent devices, services and systems. This information allows us to see trends and opportunities for change that we would otherwise miss.  With the rise in network and RFID technology we are pointing to a time where personal informatics can play an important role in our lives. If people can access this information about their daily routines, and interact with their own personal data currently invisible to them: would they make more informed decisions?

One of the greatest values of this new technology is the ease with which it can provide information about specific products and services we use. If household items, personal belongings and new devices could be used to motivate people to make small changes in their lifestyle, the effect could be positive for the entire society. Essentially: what are the possibilities when we help make people aware of their life patterns?

Specific contexts

In our everyday lives we are often engulfed in specific contexts, which makes it difficult to see the bigger picture. Personal Informatics enables us to see relationships in our behaviour we would otherwise miss. Devices such as Nike + and money management software Mint aren’t designed to control your behaviour, but to monitor your actions and display your information. They do it in such a way that it will raise questions and give you the platform to make changes. Many opportunities from personal informatics can happen at a grass roots level. For example if you start monitoring your home energy consumption and realize that you are leaving your lights on more than needed you can instantly change your behaviour.

Opportunities

I see huge potential in the field of personal informatics and it is definitely something that is very exciting in the UX field. There are two areas of challenge within it that really interest me. Firstly: how can these personal insights and data behind your lifestyle be delivered in such a way that it will impact someone on an emotional level. How can you motivate people so they will actually change their actions rather than just turning a blind eye to the reality.

The second is that our lives are already infiltrated with huge amounts of information each day from emails to RSS feeds. So how can the interface for these products, services or software be designed in such a way that the information you receive does not add to the information overload that currently exists. Plus it should not result in people compulsively checking their ‘data’ as so many people currently do with email.

Examples

Nike +
Nike + is one of the most commercial and well discussed personal informatics tools currently available. The system is made up of a small chip that you insert in your running shoes, combined with a personal online service. The tangible UI which is imbedded in the sole of your shoes communicates with your Apple iPod (which has pre-loaded software) feeding it with information about your running to help you track your training regime. The system essentially becomes a digital personal trainer. After you have completed your training session you can plug your iPod into your computer and log into your personal Nike + account. What I think has greatly contributed to the success of the Nike + system is that even though you have a personal account you are part of a community. Your web based account allows you to provide training tips and advice to other people and recommend good running routes. By being part of community I really believe that it makes peoples actions feel more valued.

Nike + software, tracking you progress

The Wattson
The Wattson is a new kind of home appliance that is networked to a sensor attached to your home’s electric meter box. Using colours and numbers, the Wattson device displays your energy consumption and stores it on an online database making it easy for you to manage your electricity usage and therefor save money. Not only is the system hugely informative and practical… the device also looks great.

Time will tell…

Personal Informatics is a very powerful idea, and is hugely based on the assumption that people will makes changes if they are given the platform to do so. Time will tell if knowing more about ourselves will empower people to adjust their daily routines, but the early success in such an emerging field sure is exciting and will hopefully bode well for the future!